Lanzhou Ink-Wash Danxia Landform 兰州水墨丹霞

About Lanzhou Ink-Wash Danxia Landform

The Xinhua dispatch sets out where the landform is and what it is. It places Shuping town, with a resident population of only about 15,000, where the Qilian Mountains meet the Loess Plateau near Lanzhou, and says tributaries of the Yellow River have broken the terrain into a network of gullies and that long geological evolution formed an expanse of coloured-hill landform that people named Shuimo Danxia. It describes the formation as mainly coloured hills with danxia secondary, and says that from the point of view of farming and settlement its real character is bad land lacking topsoil and vegetation, but that geologically it is a natural textbook recording changes in landform and a rare pristine landscape in the arid north-west. The dispatch gives the extent as 600 square kilometres, while the China National Radio report describes a 400-square-kilometre danxia landscape; both figures are reported here as those pages give them.

The dispatch also gives the site's recent history. In the 1980s, it says, villagers built dozens of brick kilns in the area to exploit the easily worked red soil, and the quarrying and the smoke did so much damage to the landform and the environment that they found the loss outweighed the gain. In 2016 the local government shut the kilns down and began designing tourism products around the landscape, and in 2017 the Lanzhou municipal government formally brought the Shuimo Danxia tourism project into its development plan. The Lanzhou Shuimo Danxia tourist scenic area formally opened in 2023 with a visitor centre, viewing platforms, a transport system and a smart tourism service system, and the dispatch describes it as a comprehensive scenic area combining geological sightseeing, cultural experience, ecological leisure and popular-science study.

On visitor numbers and what the site offers, the dispatch records that the scenic area received 750,000 visitors in 2023, rising to 1.15 million the following year, with a single-day record of more than 20,000 in May of the year of writing. It describes red and grey-green rock alternating inside the scenic area and the undulating coloured hills running to the horizon, and records that the area has added low-altitude sightseeing by helicopter and hot-air balloon and a large live performance, Wu Ma Danxia, along with 12 space-capsule units for overnight stays. It also records that the scenic area was selected as a typical case in the National Development and Reform Commission's 2024 national list of new consumption scenarios.

The China National Radio report, written ahead of the May Day holiday in 2026, describes the visitor arrangements in more detail. It says the scenic area has built seven viewing platforms, including Silk Road Rosy Clouds, Nine-Colour Danqing and Danding Lansheng, and 3,500 metres of boardwalk, and that the route runs from high to low and from far to near, with visitors first climbing Danding Lansheng for the panorama, then going to Silk Road Rosy Clouds to see the coloured hills, and finally entering Nine-Colour Danqing. It lists the additions as a glass water slide 2.5 kilometres long, a zip line, boats, hot-air ballooning, off-road vehicles, shared electric vehicles and camel riding, together with the Youyou Xinsu space-capsule units and danxia wooden-cabin guesthouses, and it quotes a deputy head of the scenic area's operations department saying that immersive routes have lengthened the average visitor stay from two or three hours to half a day or a whole day. The same report describes the landform as a 150-million-year geological spectacle and says the scenic area has streamlined ticket booking and entry and added entry channels and frontline staff for the holiday peak.

Neither source gives opening hours, ticket prices or the dates of seasonal closure, and neither says which of the platforms and rides are operating at any given time, so the catalogue's caution to stay on open routes stands. The Xinhua dispatch is a news feature in a series on town economies and the China National Radio report is a holiday-season promotional item, so the visitor numbers, the area figures and the descriptions of the site are those pages' own; no geological survey or official scenic-area grading list was consulted in this round. The China National Radio report's statement that the site is 13 kilometres from the city is its own and no other source reached here gives a distance, and its 'nine mosts' description of the landform is not adopted.

What to look for

• The three viewing platforms the China National Radio report names: Danding Lansheng for the panorama, Silk Road Rosy Clouds for the coloured hills and Nine-Colour Danqing
• The 3,500 metres of boardwalk, which the report says the route follows from high to low
• The glass water slide, which the report gives as 2.5 kilometres long, and the zip line across the gorge
• The alternating red and grey-green banding of the rock that the Xinhua dispatch describes inside the scenic area

Location & getting there

Getting to Lanzhou Ink-Wash Danxia Landform

Use an authorised visitor route. Cave sections, geological sites and access roads can close independently, so confirm the area that your ticket covers.

• Search for 兰州水墨丹霞 with 兰州市 and 永登县.